Maintaining Normality

nor·mal·i·ty

nôrˈmalədē/

noun

noun: normalcy

1. the condition of being normal; the state of being usual, typical, or expected.
2. 
   

Saving all of our money has definitely not been easy.

It's actually been pretty difficult, because we are so used to living our life however we want- eating out 3-4 times per week, spending Friday nights out with friends (spending money), and spending my few days off going crazy and splurging hardcore.

We've been well-behaved, though.

Since we have started this saving money thing we have been eating out 0-1 times per week. We only do it because we need to maintain normality.

And when we do it eat out, we make sure it's either at my work (I get an employee discount, and the food is amazing) or we make sure we have a coupon (my birthday helped a lot with this).

P.S. This means no alcohol with dinner on these nights. Because it's a waste of money.

When we hangout with friends we are doing things that are FREE - movie night, game night, free events, etc.

And, lucky for us, we bought events really far in in advance- so we have some things that come up that seem free since we paid for them 6+ months ago.

For example, we spent our Friday night in Orlando seeing Orlando City Lions play their last friendly match before their season starts. We bought our season tickets about 8 months ago- so it seems completely free, not to mention this will take up most of Jordan's weekends until we leave for our trip. AND, we will be selling the tickets for the dates we are gone. It will seem like extra cash in our pocket!

My point is this, even when you are on a budget you need to maintain normality. 

It's no different than a "diet." If you focus too much on the things you can't have, instead of the things you can have- you're bound to fall off the bandwagon, and fall.

Even if I do have a day of weakness where I didn't plan well and need to buy my lunch out- I make a wise decision, and I try not to get discouraged.

Instead, I just make sure to somehow make up that few dollars through one of my nifty extra cash sites.

If you missed that post you can see it here (:

We need to continue living our normal lives, but making slight changes to better ourselves.

We have decided to continue budgeting tightly until my student loans are paid off, and we are at least 50% done paying off Jordan's car.

We now know that we CAN budget, and we CAN watch our spending, and even still be happy!

If you're in need of any saving tips please let me know. I have an entire excel sheet laid out through March (right before our trip) tracking all of our checks and balances so that I could estimate how much money we would save before the trip!

Xoxo,

     B <3